Gaining more than weight

Tonight weight loss made me lose yet another thing…my therapist. She has, as with many therapist past, deemed that I need inpatient or residential treatment to recover. I know I don’t…I just keep playing around in my outpatient recovery. I mean I was, before my dad died, recovering successfully outpatient for the first time. Not 100% successful and I was still a bit stubborn, but I was gaining weight, facing fear foods, and being compliant. It was amazing. But then I throw it all out because of the weight gain or just because I felt I could. And now…now yet another therapist has deemed me not capable of recovering outpatient.

Trust me, if I thought inpatient or residential would benefit me I would be there. Inpatient is so much easier than outpatient. People make meals for you, sign off on the meals, everyone (or well most everyone) there is having to gain weight so it makes it easier on you. There are no temptations and you don’t have to worry about the world. You just spend the days coloring and talking. It’s plain, it’s simple, but it’s not life. It does work for most people, especially residential treatment…but for me..it’s just too easy. I go through the motions, gain the weight, but leave more disordered than when I went in. With more tools of the trade. So I leave..and lose the weight..and end up back at square one. And doing that again will kill me. So it’s time to actually fully recover outpatient. And that means gaining weight.

But today has shown me weight loss will only make me lose things. I lost precious opportunities to make memories with my dad, lost my health, now I lost my therapist…and I could lose my life. But gaining…gaining is more than weight. I gain so much more…so much I want.

By recovering, handing over weight gain worries to my nutritionist, and actually gaining to my healthy weight I don’t just gain weight….

• I gain the ability to prove everyone wrong who thinks I need inpatient/residential.
• I gain the chance to show just how strong my God is and that all things, including outpatient treatment, are possible through Him.
• I gain the ability to prove I really am motivated and can do this outpatient. I keep telling people one thing, but by avoiding weight gain proving another.
• I gain the ability to learn how to truly eat healthy. To eat healthy means to nourish your body to a healthy weight. It means not maintaining a deadly low weight. It means listening to proffessionals like nutritionist and letting them worry about your weight gain.
• I gain the chance to go to Denver. I could never be in social work school at a deadly low weight….it will be obvious I am struggling with an eating disorder. Plus, I doubt I could survive the winters in Denver at such a low weight.
• I gain the chance to share success with my nutritionist. At the end of the year to finally have recovered with her.
• I gain independence from doctors. I won’t have to be worried about balancing graduate school and treatment. I will still have a nutritionist and probably therapist, but won’t have to have so many appointments. 
• I gain the freedom from fearing being hospitalized. I won’t have to go to the doctor scared they will commit me.
• I gain the ability to thank my dad and those still living for supporting me in my pursuit of outpatient recovery even when others were against it. They won’t have to regret their decisions.
• I gain the ability to make happy memories with my family instead of them having to be scared I will die.
• I gain the freedom from having to worry about weight gain, because I will reach a healthy weight and maintain.
• I gain the ability to be active and live a healthy lifestyle. Right now it’s not even safe for me to do yoga.
• I gain the chance to have a normal college life and to be able to experience it. I won't be so focused on food and weight even though I am gaining. Because gaining will be the focus of my nutritionist. 
• I gain the pride of knowing I am fighting a disorder many don't overcome. Of knowing I am inspiring instead of scaring others. 
• I gain experience of gaining weight outpatient which I can use to help others recovering from an eating disorder. I will have gained inpatient, residential, and outpatient. No better way to learn than from experience. 
• I gain strength, both emotional and physical. I will be gaining muscled and gaining strength to overcome my fears. 
• I gain the body the Lord designed me to have. The temple he designed my body to be. The strong, fortified temple...not this frail frame. 
• I gain success. I won't have to say I was too sick to recover outpatient. I will be able to say I was strong enough and courageous enough and motivated enough to recover outpatient even with all the odds stacked against me. 
• I basically gain freedom and life. I gain the recovery I so what, the one my dad believed I could achieve, and the one my support is just waiting for me to prove is possible for me because they know it is. 
• I gain the chance to move on with life. For the focus of my life to not have to be weight gain because everyone will know I am gaining the appropriate weight and won't have to fear. Then I will be at a healthy weight and won't want to lose it and so weight gain will be over. I will never have to do it again and I can move on with life. 
• I gain the ability to say and prove I am truly in recovery. 

There is just so much life for me to live and I can’t do that at this weight. This low weight will kill me. Gaining weight is part of recovery. It freaking is recovery. I can’t say I am in recovery if I am eating so little that my weight isn’t increasing. Gaining weight is the only way to gain freedom. Freedom from the naysayers, freedom from being deemed too difficult or sick, freedom from being everyone’s worry, freedom from having to defend my freedom…and most importantly freedom from ED.

I am just tired of having to fight to stay outpatient and this is an easy fight to end by proving I can recover outpatient by gaining weight. I wish eating fear foods was enough. I wish eating dessert was enough. I wish journaling was enough. But the true measure of recovery is gaining weight. Because if I am doing all those things and still not gaining weight...I am still with ED. Honestly, if I am not gain weight on a weight gain meal plan then I am restricting somewhere. Yes, life is more than numbers...but weight gain has to be a measure of recovery and it's time to measure up. So people don't have to fear, I don't have to fight and explain why I should recover outpatient, and so I can move on with life. 

It’s time to commit, to gain, to truly recover, and to be free.  I can't wait for this recovery including weight gain. Nutritonist sessions won't have to be...yes Jess you did great with freedom foods BUT you didn't gain. Coming home won't have to be, yes Jess we are so proud you got to eat dessert with us BUT you haven't gained weight. Reality is the way to prove I am recovering and am getting better is to do the one thing I am so scared to do and gain weight. I am ready to be recovered...ready to move on with life. But I can't move on from ED unless I gain weight and thus gain freedom. 

I'm done..with losing weight

Today I decided I am done. No, not with recovery..well obviously because I’m still not getting my meal plan in. But I am done with weight loss. I am done with doing everything to avoid gaining. I am ready to just let it happen. If it happens faster than I want to not throw in the towel, but let my nutritionist change my meal plan accordingly. I am ready to just gain at the rate it happens, because as I saw in the past month…it may shoot up, but then the next week gain nothing, so it all balances out. But I am done with losing weight. It’s just gotten old. And that’s not just all I am done with. Because being done with losing weight and committing to gaining the weight my body desperately needs means:

I am done with avoiding weight gain that is going to happen whether I want it to or not. I have to gain it or I will die and I want to do it outpatient.

I am done with setting myself up for failure by saying what I am going to do with my intake if weight goes up a certain amount. This is my nutritionist role not mine.

I am done being afraid of fruits and vegetables because they may make me gain too fast. I want to be free to eat what I want. To give my body a chance to learn how to process all foods so one day I can maintain and eat what I want.

I am done with calorie counting, fat counting, carb counting. I want to learn to love and appreciate food like my dad did. I am tired of food being numbers. I want food to be freedom and nutrients and something I can enjoy.

 

I am done with controlling my food and sticking to “rules” I have made up. I am ready to learn how to eat, enjoy, love, and experience food again. I am ready to finally learn what healthy is. Including a healthy weight.

I am done using exercise to control weight gain. I want to incorporate the amount of exercise my N deems appropriate when she dreams it appropriate so I can have a healthy relationship with it.

I am done with going to doctor’s scared they will put me in hospital.

I am done with letting weight dictate how I respond to my N and what food challenges I face. I want to just say Yes from now on. In fact, I don’t even want to be given options to say No. I want my N to just tell me this is what you are doing and then I can choose to disobey her but I won’t because….

I am done with disobeying my team out of fear. I am not guaranteed them forever and want to use them for as long as I am blessed to have them. Hanging myself up on weight gain and the scale…it keeps me from wanting to obey them because it keeps my focus on ED.

I am done dishonoring my father and all he has taught me and all the ways he believed in me. I am ready for his spirit to live on through me and for him to guide me. This means being obedient and doing all my team tells me as he always wanted. It means gaining weight.

I am done with standing in the way of my future. This weight is not sustainable or liveable. I have to gain weight in order to live and have to live in order to have a future.

I am tired of contradicting myself and going against what I would advise my friends or the girls I will be working with in my career to do. I am ready to experience recovery and weight gain so I can know and experience what they may have to go through.

I am just done with it all. Done with losing weight. With being trapped in this disorder. With stopping weight gian because its too fast, too high, too scary. It’s time to give weight gain worries to my team. I will still worry about them, but I am done letting them dictate my life. I am done with this circle. It’s time to move on.

My dad would want me free and living so it’s time I allow that to happen. And that only comes with weight gain. With obedience. With pushing through the fear.

It won’t be easy. I have proven that as I relapsed yet again even despite my motivation to get better.  I will feel disgusting, huge, fat. But I won’t be any of those things..I will just feel them. And like all other feelings they will pass. And in those moments I will try to see myself through my daddy’s eyes. He always said he saw me as strong and beautiful and courageous no matter what. No matter my weight or status in recovery. In my dad’s eyes I was perfect the way I was..imperfections and all. He looked at me with this look that just made me feel like I was enough. So when weight gain gets hard and I feel like giving up or skimping portions or exercising, I will choose to honor my dad and to look up to Heaven…close my eyes…and see him looking back..making me feel more than enough.

My dad wanted me to gain weight. He wanted to help in any way he could, but there was nothing he could do. Especially when he wasn’t always around to cheer me on. But now he is. He will be there every day, cheering me on, and reminding me I am done with weight loss. I just have to choose to listen. Each and every day, each and every meal/snack, each and every moment..choose to hear his voice, see his face, and choose recovery.

Yes, I still only want to gain a lb per week, but I am done stressing each week with miniscule amounts above or below. If my N says it’s still in good range and isn’t too drastically off from lb per week then that is what I will choose to believe. Because she knows a lot more about healthy weight gain than I do. And it’s time to let go. Because I am done with past…I am ready for the future. 

Dad lives on through me

Had an amazing talk with Joanne tonight. She said something to me that others had been telling me, but that I was finally ready to hear. There is nothing I can do to change what happened, to bring dad back, to undo what happened last Wed. All I can do is live each and every day to honor his memory. And the last thing he would have wanted was me to relapse. The last thing he would want is for his loving, tender arms to be replaced with the deadly, debilitating claws of ED.

I really want to do as Joanne is choosing to do and put one foot in front of the other trusting my Heavenly Father and choosing to honor my father. Choosing to let his spirit live on through me. Choosing to hold onto his love of life, the sense of love he always filled me with, the hope he inspired in me and choosing life. As we spoke in some of our last texts…starting and ending each and every day with I choose life.

So how does this look? Well it means getting back on my meal plan first off. It means following EVERYTHING my team says and not skimping. It means doing the challenges I am faced with. And it means completely letting go and letting in to weight gain I desperately need. It means commiting to recovery no matter what. No matter if it means outpatient or inpatient. No matter if it means having to have every meal and snack with a person so I don’t skimp. No matter if it means having to get people to sign off on meals. No matter if it means the hospital. If it means recovery, it honors my dad, and it is what I should choose.

This also means doing something I have tried to avoid and giving my WHOLE family access to my team. My mom and Joanne. And letting them hold me accountable. Letting my team tell them my contract and letting them hold me to it. Sucking up my pride and letting them give me tough love just as I would find in the inpatient setting. It means having nowhere I can hide and act in ED while finding excuses as to how I am still in recovery. It means building the support I need and not giving ED even a small space in my life.

My dad taught me so much, motivated me so much, gave me so much hope for recovery and throwing my recovery away throws that out even more. In fact, my dad is still alive. He is in heaven and he can still teach me, motivate me, and give me hope. Unless I choose relapse. Choosing relapse kills his memory and does kill him. Choosing recovery lets my dad live on on earth through my actions and lets me stay connected to him.

 I guess the pressure is on now too, because he will always be there. Unlike before when he was a part of my recovery but I could choose not to tell him when I am slipping, now he will know. And knowing he knows I am slipping, or cutting a portion, or manipulating others, or not obeying my nutritionist…that hurts me inside. So I should use his presence to motivate me and also to let me know that support, the support I would wait for a return call or e-mail or a visit to get…it is now there constantly. All I need to do is ask my dad to help me and he will. He will be there always. Through every struggle, meal, snack, challenge..he will be there. Cheering me on and smiling. I just have to choose to let him be there to support me. I have to choose life and to honor him.

This motivates me so much. I mean..I still don’t feel completely ready to come out of my lapse, but this did help me to increase my cals tonight. To choose to honor my dad. And you know what..I will live like my dad did to. Just in the moment. Choosing recovery for the moment. Not worrying about the next weigh-in or the next day or even the next meal. Just in that one moment making the choice of life.

Love you daddy. I will beat this, because in beating this, you live on. In beating this, you are with me. In beating this I honor you, honor our relationship, honor everything we share..and I honor myself…something you so wanted me to do. Can’t wait for you to be there each and every day cheering me on. Love you Papa Bear. Thanks for motivating me yet again.